【OCAT 上海馆 | 展览预告】王郁洋：液体的月亮，长在墙上的汽车，以及介于两者之间的其他一切
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王郁洋：
液体的月亮，
长在墙上的汽车，
以及介于两者之间的其他一切
策展人：张尕
技术支持：羿柯莱生物科技
展览时间：2022年11月11日——2023年3月12日
展览地点：上海市静安区曲阜路9弄下沉庭院，负一层
展览主办：华侨城当代艺术中心（OCAT）上海馆
票价：30元（18周岁以下的未成年人、60周岁以上的老年人、军人、残障人士、医护人员等群体凭有效证件免票），购票请点击文末阅读原文
王郁洋的新展是他在OCAT上海馆的首个尝试。展览空间由奇特的阻隔和空地，以一种吹毛求疵的精确呈现，其间亦散落着怪诞的物什。这种略带神秘意味的布局并非超现实主义梦魇的后果，也非某种浪漫主义者的狂想所致，它一部分源于细菌粘液和微生物的黏性所培育出来的机器的欣喜，更准确地说，它源于艺术家身体的细胞。它使肉眼和知觉不可见的东西得以显现。此外，湿度、干燥度、空气中漂浮的微粒，以及OCAT里来去的来访者等构成日常生活的林林总总，也促成了这里诡异的景观。
OCAT于是成为一种“情境”（situation），可以说是机器中发生的情境，因为它是机器筹划的场景。不过，它不似让·丁格利（Jean Tinguely）所营造的那种由吱嘎作响和冒烟的装置构成的场景，他最著名的作品之一就是在大概 60 年前的纽约现代艺术博物馆的雕塑花园中发生过的壮观的爆炸。OCAT的场景是由机器构思出来的。因此，它并不遵循情节线索展开，而是如粉笔和奶酪一样格格不入，融合、纠缠、泄漏、聚合、空白，展现出某种挑衅的特点：液体的月亮、卡在墙上的汽车、真菌和蔓延的藻类。它使得观者在身体和情绪上都不知所措。在丁格利的情境中，机器执行了人类的梦想；而在王郁洋的情境中，机器则规定了人类的场景。
进入OCAT，迎面而来的是一群蠕动的光管。数以百计的光管蠕动着，抽搐着，小心翼翼地划定它们与“邻居”的距离，互相规避着，同时又试图凝聚在一起。这或许是一个关乎欲望和拘泥的机器之舞，并非某种自动机的拟人化仪式，而是暗示着后续到来的一种生物媒介集置（the bio-media assemblage）的演展。
如果机器被给予了一个空间，比如OCAT的某一部分，它会用什么逻辑来摆设东西？它可能会鼓捣出自己顽皮的恶作剧。事情果真如此：它把墙体切成了一些尴尬的断面，留下一条有点让人发怵的通道；来访的人们必须费力才能挤过这个不近人情的小径。其次，它不用穿孔器凿穿墙壁，而是安排两辆汽车，有一辆大到近乎荒诞，穿透位于靠近天花板的墙的上半部分。“布置”成了一个快乐的机器突发奇想而来的新布局，令人莫名其妙。
作品局部，图片由艺术家王郁洋提供
“勾勒姆”（Golem，魔像）既是这个巨大泥块的标题，同时也指涉着一种不可名状的生长形式。Golem是一个由咒语和字母赋予生命的本来没有生机的东西，在这里用来暗示由编码带来生命的当代愿景的那种象征意义是显而易见的。这个泥像的样子是人工智能根据从王郁洋身上收集到的生物识别数据，对艺术家外形进行模仿的可怜的产物。不过尽管不伦不类，它依然是人工智能把艺术家意识升华、定型的样态。气候、温度和其他环境状况会塑造这尊脆弱的粘土人像，或最终促成它的腐坏并在未来的考古中发掘于OCAT的尘埃中。
王郁洋以制作由数千个耀眼灯泡组成的人造月亮而出名。在OCAT，一轮或明或暗的荧青之月从艺术家体膜里那数十亿栖息在肉体和内脏上的微生物和生物量构成的地下世界发出光芒。月亮就是发光的脏器（抑或是杜尚密室的绿门后所见的发光气体[1]）。身体是波动的，哪怕我们只能看到固态的形式；身体是一个多孔的集置，以纳秒的速度渗透进分子和粒子的周遭里。这就是生命。真实总是超现实的和不真实的，如果我们能把自己拽出人类可怜的有限视野、智力还有男子气概，我们会发现在生命交接中并不像常识所断言的那样有着真实的边界。
透过一扇通往天空的窗户，蓝天为OCAT的空间投进了一块洁净无暇的光的形状。这是一幅美丽的画面：一束光从天花板上完美的方形开口射进来，它的光影交错，则是上海地貌在时光中的折射。迷人的光线与Golem 所面向的天窗相互辉映，不过，这里的只是幻觉的天光。（看似）自然的光是有寿命的，就像地板上蠕动的灯光和液体月亮的光一样。一切可见的都是短暂的，不可见的则是不朽的。
居于这些东西之间的是什么？在地面蜿蜒蠕动的灯光、半悬在墙上的汽车、向上挤压并承受日晒雨淋的泥像以及液体的月亮发出的闪烁蓝光之间，是无处不在的细菌和微生物，对人类的感知来说，它们往往是无法察觉，不可言喻的，但在这里，它们以夸张的亮蓝色显现出来。
这种新的克莱因蓝有着生物特性，准确来说它是合成生物学的杰作。转基因成分的混合培养产生了一种在生物体中非常罕见的绚丽蓝色。这种强烈的颜料是如此丰富和生动，像要穿透它的玻璃罩泼溅一地。但可以肯定的是，它与普鲁士蓝没有任何相似之处，普鲁士蓝是第一种现代合成颜料，致命的氰化物曾作为副产品被分离出来。
作品局部，图片由艺术家王郁洋提供
到处绵延的， 是从Golem的菌类那里泄漏出来的苔藓。但那是被重新定义的微生物。
在语义已经获得行动力的时代，定义意味着编码和繁殖，它始于所有生命最基本的配方——DNA。所有生命都有一个共同的祖先，证据可追溯到37亿年前，那时生命的迹象首次出现在生物活性物质（biogenic matter）中。但在OCAT里，最原始的东西变成了最复杂和最精细的：“真菌”一词的字典条目被翻译成ATCG，即DNA的碱基对，然后被植入真核生物体的DNA中。因此，真菌的后代被认为是原始真菌DNA 和经过人类语言阐释的DNA的杂合体。自然与非自然交织在一起，成为第三自然，这是当今人们非常渴望的一种完美的共生关系。更新后的生物量（biomass）囊括了万物，仿佛在无可争辩地宣称真菌和人类是同源的。
由此，OCAT的情境是由生物计算制造出来的。王郁洋再度摈弃了艺术家的自我，为我们提供了另一种猜想。但这一次，无处不在的是这种前所未有的粘稠和潮润。这究竟是硬机器的一个湿梦，还是由我们仍将其称为“机器”的、模棱两可地充满活力的、不定形的缠绕之物所讲述的轶闻逸事？
文：张 尕
译：汪嫣然
[1] 编者注：此处指马塞尔·杜尚（Marcel Duchamp，1887-1968）于1946-1966年创作的作品Étant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas)。
关于艺术家
王郁洋
1979年出生于哈尔滨，曾经就读于中央美院附中、中央戏剧学院、中央美术学院，自2008年起任教于中央美院实验艺术学院并在北京居住和创作。王郁洋虽然使用新兴媒介进行创作，却从不强调技术的新奇。他似乎更感兴趣于“过时”的技术、“破坏”美学及物质浪费带来的艺术性。他的作品涉及各种媒介，并充分拓展其内在潜力。他以幽默的、虚构奇观的方式来探究和表述人的身体、经验及认知之间的关系，探讨人造现实、媒体、历史感知与身体认同之间的关系。
关于策展人
张尕
媒体艺术策展人。中央美术学院教授。曾策划中国美术馆媒体艺术三年展系列（2008-2014）等。近期策展项目包括We=Link网络艺术系列展（2020-2021），第6届广州三年展（联合策展，广东美术馆，2018），Datumsoria：真实的复归（ZKM, 2017）等。张尕就媒体艺术与文化发表过广泛的演讲，并出版过书籍及论文。自2015年起，他亦担任上海新时线媒体艺术中心艺术指导。
WANG Yuyang：
Liquid Moon，
Automobiles in the Wall，
and Everything Else inbetween
ZHANG Ga
For WANG Yuyang's most recent exhibition and first foray within OCAT's premises, the galleries are rearranged with strange partitions and clearings, rendered in persnickety exactitude, and sporadically placed are some uncanny items. The slightly occult setup is not the aftermath of a surrealist nightmare, nor a romanticist's rhapsody, but is partially the result of machinic excitement which was nurtured in bacterial slime and microbial viscosity or, to be more precise, cells that came from the artist's biopsy specimen, that makes manifest the invisible to human eyes and perception. In addition, the routines that form the sum of the everyday existence, the humidity, the dryness, and the particles floating in space, and the come-and-go of OCAT visitors also contribute to the unlikely scenography.
OCAT therefore has become a situation. A situation in a machine, so to speak, because it is a machine that contrives the situations. It is nevertheless not a machine like the rattling and smoldering apparatus which Jean Tinguely called a situation, a famous example of which ended up exploding spectacularly at the Sculptural Garden of Museum of Modern Art some 60 years ago. OCAT's scenography is thought up by a machine or many machines. Therefore it does not follow an unfolding plotline but, rather, it amalgamates, entangles, leaks, aggregates, empties, and displays fastidious particularities off-kilter like chalk and cheese: liquid Moon, automobiles stuck in the wall, bacteria, and sprawling fungi. It solicits an involuntary deviation both mentally and bodily. Tinguely's situation is a man's dream performed by a machine, WANG Yuyang's situation is a machine mind stipulating a human scenario.
Entering OCAT, the visitor is greeted by a colony of wiggling light tubes. Hundreds of them squirming, twitching, carefully delineating their proximity with neighbors, circumventing and, at the same time, attempting to coalesce. It is a machinic dance of caution and lust perhaps but not an anthropomorphic ritual of automata, rather an inkling of the bio-media assemblage which is to ensue and unfold.
What would be a machine's logic to arrange objects if it were given the material properties of a place, say a segment of OCAT's gallery. It might come up its own naughty mischief. That's exactly what happened. It sliced the wall into some awkward partitions leaving a precariously narrow path; a human visitor must try hard to squeeze though that inhuman passage. Next, it likes to thrust open the wall, not with a piercing apparatus but by arranging two automobiles to be things of penetration and halfway up the wall, too, close to the ceiling. Arrangement is re-arranged hilariously by a jolly machine whim, inexplicable.
Part of the work. Image courtesy of the artist.
Golem is invoked in the title of this monumental lump of mud and the unnamable growing form, and in that golem was an inanimate thing granted life by incantations and letters, the symbolism here to elicit a contemporary vision of code-engendered life is obvious. The form of the golem here is a wretched result of AI seeking to emulate the shape of the artist, based on biometric datasets accrued from WANG Yuyang, albeit deviated, becoming a crystalline form of the artist's consciousness. Climate, temperature and environmental situations would sculpt and probably precipitate the eventual decay of the fragile clay (supposedly) humanoid figure back to dust at OCAT in the archeological future.
WANG Yuyang has been known for making artificial moons made of thousands of dazzling bright light bulbs. The flickering neon blue moon at OCAT shines from the underworld of the artist's bodily membranes: billions of microbes and biomasses that dwell on human flesh and viscera. It's the illuminating guts (or the illuminating gas as seen behind the green door of Duchamp's occult chamber[1]). Body fluctuates even though we only see a solidified form; body is a porous assemblage that permeates into the molecular and particle umwelt every split nanosecond. That is life, interchanging with no real boundary as claimed by empirical knowledge. The real is always the surreal and unreal, if we could drag ourselves out of our pitifully limited human vista, intellect, and masculinity.
With a window into the sky, the blue sky sheds an immaculate form of light into OCAT's premises. A beautiful picture: a light ray beams in from the perfectly square opening carved out of the ceiling, alternating effulgence with shadow in tandem with Shanghai's cartographic latitudes and altitudes. The mesmerizing ray of light resonates with the skylight toward which the Golem is rising, except it is only an illusion of the atmosphere. The (supposedly) natural light has a life span, as with the wiggling lights populating the floor and the light from the liquid moon, all can be seen as transitory while all that is unseen is immortal.
What is between all these? Between the wiggling lights sprawling the floor, the automobiles suspended halfway in the wall, the mud clumps extruding upward embracing the rains and winds from outside and the flickering blue light from the liquid moon are the ubiquitous bacteria and microbes, often imperceptible and anonymous to human sensibility, but here epiphanized in ostentatiously bright blue.
The new Klein Blue is of a biological kind, to be precise, of a wonderful work of synthetic biology. The blended culture of transgenic ingredients yields a splendid blue that is very unusual in living organisms. The intensely colored pigment is so rich and lively that it is to pierce through its glass encasement and spill all over. But, certainly, it is not remotely akin to Prussian blue, the first modern synthetic pigment from which deadly cyanide had been isolated as a byproduct.
Part of the work. Image courtesy of the artist.
Permeating everything are slime molds leaked from Golem, but they are microbes redefined.
In an age when semantics has acquired agentic potency, to define is to code and to procreate, and it starts with the most rudimentary recipe of all life, DNA. All lives have a common ancestor, the evidence can be traced back to some 3.7 billion years ago when signs of life first emerged in biogenic matter. But at OCAT the most rudimentary has become the most intricate and elaborate: a dictionary entry for the word "fungus" is translated into ATCG, the base pairs of DNA, and then injected into the eukaryotic organism. It is assumed that future generations of the fungi will therefore be hybrids of the original fungi DNA and the human language re-interpreted DNA. Nature is imbricated with the unnatural to become the third nature, a perfect symbiosis that is much desired today. The refurbished biomass sprawls between everything as if to make its indisputable claim that fungi and humans are of the same origin.
Thus, the OCAT situation is a bio-computational fabrication. WANG Yuyang once again lets go of the artist self, delivering us yet another kind of conjecture. But this time around, ubiquitously present is this viscosity and humidity unseen before. Is this a wet dream of the hard machine or an extraordinary anecdote told by the ambiguously energized and amorphously convoluted thing, which we shall still call a machine?
[1] refers to Marcel Duchamp(1887-1968), Étant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas).
About the Artist
WANG Yuyang
WANG Yuyang (b.1979, Harbin) studied at the China Central Academy of Drama and the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has taught at the School of Experiment Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts since 2008 and lives and works in Beijing. WANG Yuyang creates works using emergent media but does not deliberately emphasize the novelty of technology. He is more interested in the artistry brought about by “outdated” technology, “destructive” aesthetics and material waste. His work has employed all possible media. He often uses humour, fiction and spectacles to explore and reflect upon the relationship between the human body, experience and cognition. At the same time he also investigates the relationship between artificial reality, media technology and historical perception.
About the Curator
ZHANG Ga
ZHANG Ga is a media art curator. He is Distinguished Professor and Vice Dean of the Institute of Sci-Tech Arts, China Central Academy of Fine Arts. He was curator of three editions of Media Art Triennial (National Art Museum of China, 2008-2014). His recent curatorial projects include We=link series of online programs (2020-2021), The 6th Guangzhou Triennial (co-curator, GDMOA, 2018), and Datumsoria: The Return of the Real (ZKM, 2017). ZHANG Ga has lectured on media art and culture around the world. His publications include edited books and essays. Since 2015, he directs Chronus Art Center in Shanghai.
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11月11日为嘉宾媒体预览日
11月12日起正式向公众开放
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参观须知
一、购票
王郁洋个展票价30元，请识别下方二维码购票（免票群体包括18周岁以下未成年人、60周岁以上的老年人、军人、残障人士、医护人员等）。
展览“邵文欢：万境之眼”免费，无需购票。
二、预约
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关于OCAT上海馆
参观时间 | Admission Hour
10:00-18:00 周二至周日（周一闭馆，节假日等特殊时期开放时间根据场馆公告而定）
最后入场时间：17:30
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-1F Sunken Garden, Lane 9, Qufu Road, Shanghai (MTR Line 8 & 12 Qufu Road Station)